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Sunday, September 4, 2011

Book Blast

Well, like so many others I am having to learn to do more with less. First, teacher assistants were cut on all but two workdays prior to the start of school. My assistant was actually only with me one day during this time because of her mandatory attendance at a day long training for EC bus riders. That's right, she is being expected to ride the EC bus on a daily basis. This is a three hour ride that begins at 5:30 in the morning and is considered part of her 8 hour day. Of course, this means she is only in the library for 5 hours on a daily basis. This has really changed how we operate, but we are adapting. At my school, I operate as not only Media Coordinator, but Technology Facilitator and technician as well. While I cannot fix everything, I am the first stop for all technology troubleshooting. The most important concern for me in the midst of all of this change is making sure to maintain the instructional part of my program. Needless to say, the beginning of the year has already been incredibly tiring. So far this blog entry sounds like I just want to complain, but actually it is the exact opposite. I just felt you needed a picture of "a day in the life" especially since my Book Blast took priority over many of those other daily tasks. It is about reshaping priorities.

I recently read a blog entry on Shelf Consumed called It's a blast. It really made me think about how we could get books into the hands of our students faster. We had our own Book Blast which I think was a real success. All but one of our Language Arts teachers signed up, so we saw 35 classes this past week for 10 minute increments. Almost all of our classes were able to finish in 10 minutes, and I was able to connect with a large number of students by helping them find a book, making reading suggestions, etc. It was great. Not surprisingly, the classes that were not in and out within 10 minutes were the classes that my assistant was not available for. Those classes proved very difficult for me to help students and check them out in 10 minutes. I built on the idea from Shelf Consumed and made the event a lot of fun. We played party dance music during each class session. It was interesting to see kids bee-bopping (is that how you spell that?) to the music while browsing the stacks. I also gave away prizes. After students had checked out everyone was instructed to turn to p. 21 and if they had a pink or purple sticky note, they won a prize. I have some pens with our school name and a quote about reading. Teacher feedback was very positive and I am filing away this idea for the future.